Contemporary Practice, Week 4 – Workshop Challenge, The Self

Creative, Ambitious, Forward, Resilient, Thoughtful, Provoking, Willing, Dynamic, Giving, Happy, Experimental, Dextrous, Excited, Personal, Contemporary, Lucky, Adaptive, Learning, Clean.

With this week’s workshop, I really wanted to do something physical as I’ve only been doing digital stuff so far. This project was a great experiment for me. It was not only a good excuse to look deeper into myself but also at others around me. I realised how different everyone was internally but that we share similar exteriors. The idea is that we all start off with a similar container for our thoughts and feelings but throughout our lives we collect more pieces of ourselves, constantly evolving our whole.

I used a bamboo cylinder as an object that symbolises myself, a container that would hold all of my ideas and my inner self. I then engraved my container and gave it a brain and a world to draw ideas from. I used a wood burning pen so that the symbols would be a permanent fixture on my being. Next I needed to have a space for the ideologies and thoughts that my being collects and has collected, to gather. I cut a groove into the cylinder as a space to put ideas and elements that represent me as a designer.

I have a really nice G.F Smith paper stocks book that I looked through and found colours and names that represent my 5 values. I then cut them into shapes that further represent those values.

Clear Blue Sky – Clean, left the shape as a clean backdrop.
Dark Silver Cloud – Experimental, cut away the middle of the shape leaving sharp edges.
Night Offshore Blue – Ambitious, a cloud shape, reaching for the skies.
Pastel Heart Attack – Thoughtful, Heart shaped.
Nuclear Acid – Dynamic, Lightening.

Here is a video timelapse of the creation:

Next is the part where it all comes together. The 5 values don’t look like much on their own but come together to form a unit. Me. On the underside of the cylinder is an eye. The paper can slot around the eye but the eye can never see the paper when it’s a part of the whole. Sometimes it’s hard to see your values but they’re always there. You can ditch old ones and collect new ones but they’re always a part of you.

I also decided to draw this design as a flag. Showing a good use of this rectangular design, as my home nation of ‘The Self’.